Bad regulations caused Los Angeles to burn, not climate change.

Bad regulations caused Los Angeles to burn, not climate change. 

Climate change is not the cause of the disaster in Los Angeles, 

but it does make our old problems worse. 

Two types of laws create our fire and flood merry go round. 

• The ones that regulate, or not, our land management. 

• And the ones that allow for cheap buildings in harm’s way that burn easily. 

This land and building codes malfeasance is older than anyone alive. 

It is older than any perception of climate change. 

The fires and floods are both caused by the same bad practices. 

The cost of this wildland mismanagement and bad building codes is high in human lives and is also measured in economic hardship, personal loss and the deaths of livestock, pets and wild animals.

This might sound harsh. How harsh was the Paradise fire? (85 dead) The Santa Rosa fire? (22 dead) 

In just the last few decades our state has had a long list of places where deadly fire disasters took place in Northern and Southern California and that list includes 25 people killed in my home town of Oakland. 

There are places where we never should have built because of the fire, flood and landslide risks. 

Parts of San Anselmo and the Russian River area flood again and again. Places like Ft. Bragg have their history written in downtown fires. The Eel River area had a 1964 flood that we have still not recovered from. There are places in the Sierras where fires have left the land damaged for decades. 

Two major practices are wrong with the land management. 

First, is that we do not set the controlled burns that the natives used for centuries. 

Don’t allow small fires, you get big fires. 

Second, we do not nurture and protect the watersheds. 

The rains run off the land so fast we get flash floods. 

The building code issues can also be grouped it two major types.

One is that our expensive housing is made of cheap materials. 

Flammable cheap materials. 

And two, is that we have to stop building in harm’s way. 

Building in flood plains and unmanaged forests are not a receipt for success. 

How did we get laws that allow turning our state into a tinderbox with landslides and building our homes out of kindling in areas that burn and flood? Economic interests and racism played a big role. 

Of course, both the land management issues and building zoning and code deficiencies are much more complex than I am expressing it here. There are more issues, not just these four, and there are a lot of political and economic problems. Let’s look at it in parts, but not forget that we are always talking about the same peoples and same lands. 

Why controlled burns? Because the land needs it. In California we live in a series of fire ecology environments. 

The ones in Los Angeles are different than the ones in Sonoma or Humbolt. But they all burn and need to burn gently. 

The controlled burns clear out the underbrush and reduce the amount of forest material that is available to a fire. They are also a step that cannot be skipped in the life cycle of a lot of the shrubs and undergrowth that is part of any healthy woodlands plant community. Some plants cannot even release their seeds without some fire. 

Be very clear, the Spanish, Russians, Mexicans and Americans did not find wild forests here. 

Our forests had been managed by native bands who were already here for a very long time. 

Right now, we are hearing a lot of talk about controlled burns. After a couple of centuries of forbidding this we are finally getting back to this critically important traditional practice. Great that we restart, but we are not starting from zero. We will have to do a lot of work to get back up to zero. 

This article is fairly good about the native people and the controlled burn situation. 

I question how much of the fire suppression motive was to protect watersheds but don’t doubt for a moment that the current regulations favor logging. 

https://www.nature.org/en-us/magazine/magazine-articles/indigenous-controlled-burns-california/ 

This article looks at the ugly history of how natives were treated and how they were not heeded. 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-affirms-indigenous-right-to-controlled-burns 

Forest management should be good watershed management. 

We want our rains to run off slowly. Those cool, tree lined streams one visits in our state parks? That is what we need more of. How do we know a healthy watershed? The flow after a rain takes some time and the waters are clear. Unhealthy? Flash floods right after a rain full of muddy water. Where we conserve forest is as important as the how we maintain them. 

Streambed care is the key to watershed health and healthy streambeds are nature’s fire breaks.

Some controlled burns are also needed to keep the creek sides healthy. 

So, should we just be setting those controlled burns and leaving those streambeds alone?

No. 

The state of our lands is too damaged to go back to native practice in one step. 

Because we have done it so wrong for so long, we need a long, and expensive, replanting effort that involves a lot of manual thinning, cutting and chipping before carful controlled burns. Those burns, some of the first in our lifetimes, need to be followed by some very intelligent replanting of trees and natural undergrowth. Here climate change makes our work harder. The rain and heat patterns were never that regular in our state and now have shifted to extremes. 

In many places we need to recover from the wrong kind of fire. The hot fires kill the underbrush and leave a disaster that will not grow back on its own in our lifetimes. A lot of challenging reforestation and soil restoration work has to be done now if we want to turn those areas back into healthy forests and watersheds inside of 50 years. 50 years would be ambitious. 

The building issues are now more that zoning and code. 

We need to fix a problem that we literally built. 

We are now at well over 1,400 buildings that have burned in Los Angeles. Since the wildland work is a project for decades, how to we stop turning our homes into bonfires? 

Roofing and siding are the big lift. Those big fires spread on blowing cinders. The cinders fall into the tar shingle roofs, the landscaping, the vinyl siding and the wooden fences. When those buildings burn, it burns hotter than forest and throws cinders higher. The high winds push the fire hotter and higher and the cycle accelerates. 

Put on fireproof shingles? Yes. Stop using plastic siding? Of course. Clear the area around buildings of fences that touch the sides and landscaping that surrounds the home in kindling? Of course. And there are other details such as wooden fences, vents and gutters… 

From the roofing, through the siding to the landscaping and sprinkler systems everything needs to be done to keep our buildings from being so easy to set on fire. 

During the Santa Rosa fire a group of employee volunteers were heroes for fighting off the falling embers on the highly flammable flat tar roof of their hospital. 

Since when do we code, zone and permit a hospital to have a highly flammable roof in a high fire risk area? Very little of our state is not in a high probability fire zone. 

San Diego finally put some serious rules about roofs and we should take a page from what San Diego has done for fire code and take it many steps further. 

Half of our state is covered with irrigation sprinklers. How about extending that to a system attached to our fire hydrants that we turn on when a fire breaks out? 

Let’s take a look at what happens now compared to what we could practically achieve on the short term. 

The bad fires we have now: 

Many of our recent fires started either in the farmland or parkland and were sparked by electrical equipment, accident, arson or naturally with lightning strikes. 

As it often works now, once started, the fire burns through private and public lands in various jurisdictions, managed by different rules, if at all. Natural fire breaks are usually too small and ineffective. Isolated buildings may not have a good buffer zone around them, but usually the fire has grown too large for cleared brush and trees be enough to keep them from flaming up. Cinders from the large fires follow the wind setting roofs on fire, especially when they get to what is called the wildland / urban interface. That interface is not sharply defined and is often a farmland interface. Fire prevention work has often not been done for a variety of reasons in the locally owned parks, state and federally owned areas and privately owned farmland that boarder urban areas. Roofs catch fire and houses, including the cars and flammable household materials, businesses, including gas stations and infrastructure burn very hot adding to the flammable cinders and how far they will travel. That cycle burns itself out only when it gets somewhere that can’t burn, such as the beach. Our fire departments usually are the ones who have to contain it in the end following heroic efforts. The larger versions of this cost lives. 

The not so bad fires we could have:

We start without so much to burn in the country or in town. The fires should be light as they pass over managed and zoned private and public lands. Streambed vegetation should be kept wide enough, lush and moist enough to serve as a natural fire break, at least in part. Cinders will still fly over, of course, and the urban / wildland boarders will still need to be defended. First defense should be roofing and siding materials that will not burn when cinders land on it. Another defense should be some kind of agricultural style sprinkler system that will cause an artificial rain before the fire sparks come close. The fire department will still have their work cut out for them, in a more routine and resourced way. 

The land and building zoning and permitting is entirely a political problem. 

Right now, our governor is promising people that they can build back right where they were and that he will ease up on permitting and authorizations so that people can quickly build back. 

Probably exactly what we should NOT be doing is building back exactly where and how we just failed. 

And we do it over and over again. I mentioned Fort Bragg. It was all built out of wood. No firewalls or remediation required. The town has a major history of destructive fires. 

If it was all so easy, it would be done by now. 

What I am writing here has been written about and proposed by better trained, more influential people than me for many decades. Everything suggested here is being done well by someone in California today. Fire ecology was old news when I started to study the problem in the 1980’s. I have written about it before many times. In the 35 years that I have lived here, there have been many fires every year. 

So, what keeps us repeating ourselves here? 

The status quo of limited responsibility and getting others to pay the damages doesn’t help. 

Land, water and building in California are powerful economic interests used to getting their own way. 

We have a system of local jurisdictions and affluent people who play those local governments that makes it easy to stick to their profitable status quo. It is easy for a lumber company, an agribusiness owner, a housing developer, etc., to lobby and get the regulatory fine print modified to help them make money. That almost defines our politics in the United State. It is even easier for big money to push their agenda at the county and city level where there is less scrutiny and the economics makes them a bigger player. In practice, the influence of money on our different levels of government is very complex as the economic interest groups operate on all levels at once and cooperate with one another. 

The agribusiness land owners resist all regulation of their land and water use. They totally got away with it before Jerry Brown dealt with the last big drought and are only now falling under some minimal regulations. 

Land barons are one of the largest lobby groups in Sacramento, if not the largest. They call themselves “farmers”.  This part of our billionaire class is used to dictating who will be a county supervision and are not receptive to their streambeds being regulated. 

The big and small building lobbies hold big sway at all levels in a way compares to the agribusiness sector. Building and real estate lobbies hold more urban power and often get the city governments that they want. There is overlap. Many of the big rural landowners are behind the sprawl that turns their farmland into track housing and strip malls. 

Somehow these builders effectively block stronger building requirements and somehow get the cheapest construction materials and practices approved. These interests build and cash out quickly. It was cheap for them because when the buildings burn, they are long gone and no longer on the hook for how buildings were built, or where. The public hears about it as if those practices were part of some kind of misguided cultural misunderstanding in our past. Then and now those building codes were created and enforced by big money. How much of the permitting and zoning is to maintain safety standards and how much is designed to carve out a captive market for the building lobby’s firms is a serious question. 

And let’s not forget the insurance companies who get their money out of harms way. In LA many people found themselves stripped of coverage before the fires. Or when they didn’t, they got their insured properties special treatment. In LA some go as far as having their own fire departments. 

We also have a system where we don’t take economic responsibility when we regulate. 

If we, as a state, start to say where and how people can build, do we help pay for it? Do we keep the insurance companies from victimizing the small stakeholders? Would we do something as practical as offering people a place to move to and the means to do it? 

What will it cost to put tiles on a million roofs? 

What will it cost to prepare for and execute those first in a century, controlled burns. 

What will the land restoration and reforestation work cost?

The costs are tremendous, and we need to spread them out over the whole economy. 

Otherwise we continue to tell people to comply and pay for it, which they will try not to do. 

That leads to the inaction being paid for so dearly in Los Angeles today. 

We will pay that same price for inaction somewhere else soon.

One of our big problems is that our political class has claimed to be doing all of this already. 

You will hear about how they have the most stringent wildlands and building codes. 

True, but I would say that we have insufficient and politically compromised regulations, strictly applied. 

What is not helpful is going through the motions and pretending to be doing the right thing while really doing the same old thing. This week my local news showed some uniformed people burning piles of cut brush in an open cow pasture of short grass, surrounding a tony housing development and calling that a “controlled burn”. 

A controlled burn is not a commodity, but there are people willing to sell you one. Same goes for a protected streambed. 

What is only marginally helpful, if at all, is some kind of gadget that will smell out a fire quicker. That made the TV news too. We need to work on the hundred years of neglect before that fire more than the hour before we see flames. We need fires that are not a catastrophe, just part of our natural environment. 

Let’s get the politics of this problem out in the open, across California, where the economic interests can’t dominate the discussion and water down the solutions. Fire ecology and how to live with it is a state wide problem that requires a state wide commitment and state wide regulations. 

We need state wide standards and enforcement to bridge the difference between the myriad jurisdictions of public and private lands. And we need a state wide building code that is hard core on fire. 

We need the state to come up with the resources for the restoration work. 

Everything I mention here as a possible solution is being done somewhere in the state right now.

We need to stop asking people to go along, we need to pass some California wide legislation. 

Local control sounds good, but in practice it gives us the results we are seeing in Los Angeles today with over 1,400 buildings lost and 25 known dead so far. 

The best way to address our land use and construction code problem is to look at ourselves as a single state divided into local environments (called biomes). We have a lot of problems and they all fit into the same California we all live in. We have a lot to learn from our native ancestors and the existing tribes and bands. We also have some of the top environmental sciences resources in the world. California is both ancient and still very natural, and it is as modern of an industrial state as one can get. Unlike other states, we have the money and expertise to make us the world leader of living well with fire. 

• When we think about how to build, or rebuild, let’s keep in mind that we are the same state with homeless people living under freeway overpasses and developments built on fertile farmland. 

• When we think about how to do rural zoning, remember that we are also where the salmon used to run. Remember that this is where our parks are packed to the brim with tourists. 

• When we think about fire and flood, let’s think about water we drink and grow food with. Let’s think about the grey water that we don’t use. Let’s think about sewage as an asset. 

It will be easier to pool our vast economic and intellectual resources and deal with our issues comprehensively to work out some integrated plans than to keep working in small bits. We need our political people to focus on the un-exciting world of code, zoning and permitting, both rural and urban. 

And climate change? Of course, climate change makes it all worse. Of course we need to get off the carbon energy systems. But driving a Prius would not have kept LA from burning. 

To keep it from burning again we are talking about heavy investment in land use and building upgrades. 

 

Note:  Since I wrote this the number of deaths and buildings lost in LA has multiplied.

Bad news from the Blue back woods

 Bad news from the Blue back woods 

Here in Oakland California, we had our own slip into darkness on election day. 

Our local version of the reactionary backlash in the deep Democrat part of dark Blue California does not conform to the liberal-radical reputation we have across the country. 

That is a good reputation that we do not deserve. 

To start with, two reactionary recalls won hands down. Oakland will be without our mayor and our Alameda County will be without our progressive district attorney. They are being blamed to for high crime rates and other things that have nothing to do with them and had started literally before they were born. 

Our own Oakland Local mini-Musk bankrolled the expensive signature gathering required, starting only weeks after the mayor and DA had been sworn into office, two years ago. 

The subsequent, well-funded advertising campaign sounded a lot like the campaign against the progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin two years ago. We all know the Trump song about how the liberals just let the criminals go without consequences and how we need to teach those bad people a lesson with harsh policing and harsher punishments. Well, the song sung around here by recall people should open them up for copywrite infringement. 

It is all BS of course, but it tugs at the heart strings of the common people who are sick of seeing their car windows broken. The failure of local law enforcement and total failure of rehabilitation was not on the ballot, or even discussed. The public is at wits end and these demagogues who have failed to provide public safety found a convenient scapegoat that that they also used for political revenge. What Chesa Boudin in San Francisco in 2022 and our Alameda County Pamela Price had in common was that they were progressive district attorneys. There is no reason to believe that they would not prosecute criminals. There is every reason to believe that they would prosecute misbehaving police, and that is why they faced recall. 

And yes, some of the people who backed the recalls on this side of the bay were involved in the one on the other side of the bay. For some history, that was the second time San Francisco got rid of a progressive DA. The first time was via the ballot box and the “moderate” replacement was none other than Kamala Harris. 

And after all of this, crime in San Francisco had not gone down. 

Just as disappointing as the recall campaign, was the campaigns for some of our local offices. There was not a lot to get excited about on the local lists, but there we some bad apples. 

The bad apples got elected. 

We have a local state legislator called Buffy Wicks. She used to work for Obama and once called herself “Buffy the Bernie Slayer”. After running a campaign with dirty false accusations against a local progressive, her parachute landed her in state house after a long history of doing absolutely nothing in local politics. 

Buffy’s candidates did really well this time. One for state Senate against the same highly qualified local representative Buffy slandered in her run. One for Alameda County Supervisor with a union busting track record, running against an honest progressive, president of the local Oakland City Council. 

The ballot in California is eight pages long, so I will cut this short right here. 

It is only after the election that one gets a look at how bad some of the candidates are. We don’t like Trump in the White House. Well, we got little blue Trumps in State House and County Court House. 

Not all of the worse ones won. A few were really good. Some were shoe-ins provided by our local Democrats giving the public a pre-managed limited choice. Other candidates were just people working on their careers. Few stand out in a good way. A couple stand out in a bad way. 

All in all, it was another good election for the funders representing real estate ownership, real estate speculation and real estate development along with the Silicon Valley money that is spreading out from San Francisco. Our mini-Musk of the recall fame is into hedge funds or something like that. 

Our all-blue elections were swamped with all-blue campaign funding. 

There was a constant, misleading barrage of advertising in Oakland and across the state. 

San Francisco takes the lead with rich people paying to get themselves elected mayor and supervisor. 

Other big winners who are telling us about how good their work is and how this election shows progress of our values are the local pro-charter school NAACP, the pro charter Great Oakland Public Schools and the pro charter school group Faith in Action. The school board elections were not great, and the only good news was that we may at least keep a couple good people. The school board majority? Meh… 

While on the subject of the local NAACP, lets keep in mind that their pro-recall community includes the former prosecutor, now judge, who ran against our recalled district attorney, the former council member who lost the election to our freshly recalled mayor and the police chief that our recalled mayor fired for not implementing internal discipline. The undisciplined officer in question was racking up something like a quarter million in extra salary, and did things that included setting off his gun in an elevator. 

You see, we don’t need Republicans to be a farce. 

Not all of the turn to the right required knowing who the players were. The mood of so-called progressive California showed its colors in some statewide ballot initiatives. Of course, the vote to take the prohibition of gay marriage out of the state constitution won. It was only necessary because not too long ago, an anti-gay marriage proposition called Prop 8 had passed. 

This time we add to our shameful votes a big NO on an end to prison slavery. NO was also the answer to raising the minimum wage. The answer was NO on allowing local governments to have rent control. 

A YES vote was there to punish the AIDS health and housing people who promote rent control. Another big YES vote was there to punish criminals more than we already do. 

We saw bucketloads of the same advertising themes as used for our local recalls, but statewide. 

The advertising against rent control was exceptionally dishonest. 

Our governor is holding an emergency session of the California State Legislature to discuss how to keep our civil liberties. I suppose that means keeping the religious extremists out of our bedrooms, clinics and the panties of little girls trying to go to the bathroom. But what else? Not electoral reform. 

Are they going to tell us that people voted Trump because they are ignorant? 

Will any of them recognize that their own shenanigans turn people off? 

When you actually live here you can see why the Democrats don’t really offer a lot in leadership. 

Thanks to the Berkeley Daily Planet for putting this one out there. 

Bad News from the Blue Backwoods. Category: Extra from The Berkeley Daily Planet

Adapting to climate change means spending the money to do it

With the “cyclone bomb” and the “atmospheric river” both hitting California again, the resulting floods are showing us again that we are not ready for the rain.

A good watershed protecting forest coverage will not be able to do more than slow down the high-water flows produced by excessive rains.  But we do not even have that kind of watershed protecting forest health.  When it rains in California we have floods.  Some of them are avoidable.  Some can be mitigated and some just cannot be helped.  Our land management does little to slow things down or get out of the way. 

And now we have bigger swings in our weather.  It is dryer for longer and then it rains harder.  There are a lot of details, exceptions, caveats and questions that need more study.  What does not need more study is that we are not doing what it takes to deal with the weather that we should expect.

The call for strategic reforestation embracing our waterways and traditional prescribed burns to keep the forests healthy and fire safe has been gaining ground.  The result is a lot more than lip service.  The people fighting the wildfires are taking proactive measures. Some of the landowners have come around. 

And it is all insufficient. 

It is not insufficient because nothing can be done.  It is insufficient because we are not spending the money.  Making the decision to reverse the land management policies of the last century and a half is not easy.  It is a case where we are telling people what to do with their property in name of the greater good. It is the larger society that is deciding what that greater good looks like. 

It is time that society at large be willing to pay for what we are telling individuals to do in our name.  

Some of the new rules need not cost much.  A field is just as productive when the fence is a few yards away from seasonal and all year creek beds. 

Some of the rules should cover things that people are going to have to spend money on anyway.  A roofing tile should not be made out of flammable materials, not in this state.

Then there are things that will cost quite a lot, and the state should help pay for.  If we need to move houses away from repeated flood or burn zones, the public needs to pick up the cost. We need to reclaim wastewater and capture flood waters and build the structures and artificial wetlands needed to clean up water and allow it to soak back into the aquifers. We need more and larger flood channels than ever before. We need to plant trees all over and create more forest buffer zones.  We will need to be telling people what to do on big farms in a way we never have before.  The government will have to tell, not ask, but at the same time it can work with established landowners to make the changes understood and done in a way that people can live with. 

We have to give up on the old American practice of making a big plan and then sticking only certain people with the bill. We need to share the costs, and nobody should be treated as “undeserving”.

If we rise to the occasion, we can adapt and mitigate the global crisis.  The trail to doing so leads back to everyone doing their share to pay for it.  That includes the wealthy paying a fair share.   

Not Unprovoked

When talking about the current Ukraine war, it is hard to know where to start.  

Each side has its own spin.  

The biggest piece of BS that our government is feeding us here in the US is the “unprovoked” part.  

To listen to all the ex-CIA hacks, retired state department hawks and military analysts talking as pundits in our media, NATO, the US and the EU are all a bunch of clean-handed angels while Russia is acting crazy under the leadership of madman dictator Putin.  

Funny how we do not hear much from anyone outside of the narrow band of NATO supporters. The reporting should remind us all of the babies in the incubator story and the clear assurances of an earlier secretary of state about weapons of mass destruction.  The same western allies all fell in line then too. 

It would be nice to hear more from China and India, for example, not to mention the Russians themselves.  Why don't any of them get interviews, but any American journalist who stands around Moscow in a Dan Rather jacket is treated like an expert? It would be better to interview their translators.  

Our western alliance governments are using this crisis to sweep a lot of their own actions under the rug. 

The eastern expansion of NATO is real, and it has been upsetting every government in Russia since the end of the cold war.  It comes with the United States pulling out of established arms control agreements and NATO holding exercises in eastern Europe that are dress rehearsals for an invasion of Russia. 

You will hear a lot of downplay, evasion and change of subject on NATO expansion from our media.  

Things in the Ukraine are not as cut and dried as Mr. Blinken and company like to pretend.  

The overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014 was sketchy.  Our government was involved but exactly how is not clear.  Just because a bunch of telegenic people storm a building it does not mean that some kind of liberation took place, or that it was democratic, or even that popular.  

The political parties that formed the prior government were outlawed and a for a quick minute, so was the Russian language, which is the first language of about a quarte of Ukrainians.  A fascist political party was very involved and that is not some Putin fantasy.  

The situation was bad enough that two the Russian speaking areas broke away and we have had around 15,000 deaths in eastern Ukraine in the following years, none of which seem to warrant a tear-jerking report from NPR or any credence from think tank spin doctors.  There was little reporting on the oligarch paid private army that initiated the Ukrainian suppression of that Russian speaking revolt.  

So, yes, Russia was hiding the fact that their troops were involved, but they did not create the situation.  There is no talk of any of the Russian speaking side of this tragedy now as the west spins up a new past for this old conflict. The problems of the Dombas is described only as a Russian aggression by our press.

Since 2014 a steady flow of weapons has entered Ukraine.  All the purr words about the Ukrainians and all the snarl words about Putin and Russia don’t change the fact that there has been anti-Russian military buildup based in Kiev and that the Russian government has been asking for it to stop.  

Russia has its own lies and dirty deeds in this conflict and our media has been doing its best to underline an exaggerated misrepresentation of them to fit the needs of the hawks.  

For example, we are being told that this aggression against Ukraine is one of a long list.  On that list is Georgia. Think what you may of the two regions involved, there is no doubt that Georgia started that war.  Look it if up you don’t believe me.  Now we are being told the opposite.  

And there is certainly more we do not know.  Are there weapons in Ukraine that both sides do not want to talk about in public?  

Russia is clearly the aggressor here.  

Being for a Russian withdrawal is justified. 

But becoming pro-Ukrainian in this war is not.

There needs to be a negotiated settlement.

Both sides have legitimate concerns.    

And to understand this war, we Americans have to stop believing that this war was unprovoked.

Today's Nicaragua and the US left

 
The US left is divided over Nicaragua.
One side feels that Ortega and the Sandinistas can do no wrong.
The other could do a better job explaining itself to the left and the public at large.   
 
This weekend Nicaragua will hold a farse election under repressive conditions.  The US left is well placed to either not explain the bad news well, or to tell us that the bad news is not true. 
 
I nearly lost my life building that revolution.  Be clear that I too wish that the bad news was not true.  But to be a revolutionary is to have a commitment to the well being of the people, and to seek out the truth, not matter how upsetting.  We have a duty to know the nuance and contradictions of any political situation in which we work.  Denial is bad psychology and worse politics. 
 
A few years back Ernesto Cardinal, my former culture minister, a poet, and a priest who was on Pope John Paul II’s shit list for being a member of the Sandinista government, was the star presenter at the San Francisco “Flor y Canto” poetry and music festival. 
 
He read some poetry and talked a bit; while doing so he said that President Daniel Ortega had become a new Somoza.  Anastasio Somoza Debayle was the dictator of Nicaragua that the Sandinistas, including Ernesto Cardinal and his brother (and fellow priest) Fernando, overthrew in 1979. 
 
I knew that things were bad in Nicaragua and had been so for some years, but to say “the same as Somoza” to me meant a lot, especially coming from a man I respected so deeply. 
 
For clarification, the Ortega-Murillo marriage are president and vice president of Nicaragua and also run the current version of the Frente Sandinista. When people refer to the Sandinista revolution, they are talking about the period from 1979 to 1990.  Some people think that the current government is a continuation of that revolution while most independent analysts think that Ortega-Murillo government is repressive and much to the right of traditional Sandinista views and ethics. 
 
Recently I have attended two Zoom meetings that both called themselves a left perspective on the current situation in Nicaragua. 
 
The first supported the current Daniel Ortega government treating it like the ongoing triumph of the revolution that I worked for in the 1980’s. It was hosted by a local Veterans for Peace group. 
 
ICSS 20210801 Revolutionary Nicaragua in the crosshairs of Imperialism Gerry Condon - YouTube
 
And the second was organized by the North American Congress on Latin America which opposes and denounces the current Daniel government.  The main takeaway from that one was to focus on getting political prisoners released.
 
The Nicaraguan Crisis: A Left Perspective (October 7, 2021) - YouTube
 
I found the second one disappointing and the first one seriously misguided. 
 
The disappointing one more closely reflected my own views, but I did not find that the answers that they gave would mean much in our discussions with the other part of the left represented by the Daniel supports.  The answers were too dismissive of other concerns in my view.  It felt like a good opportunity missed.
 
The first concern they just pushed back on, but did not really discuss, was the concern about US involvement and support for some of the opposition that has emerged in Nicaragua. 
 
Recently a friend sent me a pro Daniel article that got published on the Black Agenda Report website.  The Black Agenda Report is a damn good show and I doubt that they know how badly publishing this article damages their credibility. 
 
The article is called:
Why Defending Nicaragua is Important | Black Agenda Report by Stephen Sefton 26 Oct 2021
It starts with the line:
The U.S. effort to destabilize Nicaragua is an ongoing crime against that nation's people.
 
Is that really true?
 
American Imperialism is an ongoing reality, especially in Latin America but I do not believe that the US State Department is trying to overthrow the Danielista government.  For all the years since Daniel was elected back to the presidency, they seemed totally fine with his pro market, pro neo-liberal policies not to mention his anti-union and anti-farmer strongarm tactics.  US concern for the increasing authoritarianism and eroding democracy did not even include lip service before 2018. 
 
For imperialism to be inactive in a Latin American nation means a lot. The CIA does not just go away. I do not believe that they are totally dormant at any time. 
 
So, for the CIA to not be doing anything serious is an important event. 
 
The pro Daniel folk point to the grants and scholarships that some of the opposition leaders received from US based organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy.  The other side waived that aside saying that it is minimal, and it is true that it is minimal. When the speakers just brushed those scholarships off, they lost an opportunity to explain that it is NORMAL and LEGAL in international relations to offer students above-board education in hopes that it will influence the educated in their favor.  It is sleezy, but not subterfuge. 

 
Today’s CIA is built on a long tradition of interference in the internal affairs of Latin American nations funding political groups, unions and supporting military coups, insurgencies and US invasions.
 
Scholarships is not what we mean by imperialist interference in other nations internal affairs.  In the past, and in other nations, we have seen and still see, such tactics as pouring cash into opposition groups, including armed forces and militias (as in Venezuela recently, and many places, including Nicaragua, historically), putting the heat on to get a congress to recall a president (Honduras and Paraguay) and supporting a takeover by the police and military as in Bolivia.  This is today’s CIA. 
 
I was disappointed that the speakers did not give the accusation of US intervention more credence and provide a stronger argument as to why this is not the case in today’s Nicaragua.
 
In the course of the conversation there was only a passing mention that the participants do not support any US government interference.  In my book that should take top bill with some clarifications.  And we should also discuss the international human rights organizations that we do support getting involved. 
 
Keeping the US out of Nicaragua is always important.
 
I also felt that the Sandinista critics were too dismissive of the social welfare aspect of the Daniel version of Sandinistas.  It kind of gave away where they fit in the social-economic pyramid. 
 
Yes, the nation is poor. Yes, Ortega-Murillo practice savage capitalism.  Yes, the government is corrupt and people are losing their labor and land rights. But no, roads, schools, sewage, drinking water and such are not nothing. 
 
Try living without them! That was true for much of Nicaragua only 30 years ago.
 
There is a reason why the unaccompanied minors turning up at the US boarder are mostly from Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.  Well, two reasons.  One is that to be poor in Nicaragua is not as bad as in those three countries to their north.  The other reason, and I feel it is a big one, is that the Nicaraguan street is not under the control of the gangs.  The national police, formally called the Sandinista Police are repressive, but they are also efficient and powerful.  A Honduran does not have basic security and a Nicaraguan does, and both know it.
 
A pro Ortega-Murillo friend just sent me a digital election poster.  It lists 20 things that the government has done since this second Sandinista period began.  Some are debatable, most not. 
 
No-one on the panel mentioned any of that. They just pointed out that Nicaragua is still dirt poor and capitalist. True.  Nicaragua does not have the social network of Cuba.  But it is better than before and better than the neighbors to the north. 
 
Poverty and social welfare in Managua is one thing, poverty deep in the countryside is another.  Out in the rural areas many people still have reasons to support the Sandinistas, avidly. 
 
I was happy to see that former Comandante de la Revolución Luis Carrion Cruz (member of the committee of 9) is still willing to speak out and has taken a good stand.  I just wish that he had done a better job of reaching the American left, as the hosts said that they set out to do.
 
The first Zoom meeting I saw, the pro Daniel one, was not disappointing, it was upsetting, and I feel that it was spreading the Ortega-Murillo talking points, may of which are lies and distortions.  According to this crowd:
 
·        The protests were all just US backed instigations. 
·        The protestors are pro-imperialist, pro-contra right wingers.
·        There is no repression Nicaragua.
·        All the arrests are justified. 
·        The Nicaraguan government is socially progressive.
·        The US hates Nicaragua because it is anti-imperialist. 
 
I think you get the idea.  This crowd was mockingly dismissive of anything that the Ortega-Murillo has been accused of. Their far-fetched justifications for every arrest and repressive action were akin to what we hear from the Republicans who just cover for their leaders even when they zig zag on policies. 
 
This presentation was also upsetting to me personally.  I have met a lot of these people and at one time they had my respect for what they did to oppose Regan era wars in Central America.  The host was a local group where we used to hold meetings in person before the pandemic. At one point they showed a video of two Americans being guests of honor at a Revolution Day event in Managua.  Both don’t speak enough Spanish to beat their way out of a wet paper bag, yet they felt that “they were there and saw it for themselves” and could lecture us on the reality of Nicaragua.  It was kind of sad and pathetic. 
 
A good friend of mine looked at it and said that she feels that some people are trapped in their own nostalgia. Being part of the Sandinista revolution was the high point of their lives.  
 
What bothers me is that some people are very active telling the US left, and anyone who will listen, that the current Ortega-Murillo is just great and once again what we are hearing in the press is all just imperialism up to its same old tricks. 
 
That seems to be the entire Stephen Sefton writing franchise brand. After I saw his awful article in the Black Agenda Report, I spent some time looking him up.  He has about a half dozen pro Daniel articles running in about a half dozen places in the alternative media.
 
I consider that mis-leadership. 
 
What should the left do? 
 
Continue to fight for the respect of nations.  We should be for noninterference into other people’s affairs ALL the time, whether we like that government or not.
 
We should continue to stand up for human rights ALL of the time.  There are credible, independent human rights groups and agencies.  We should take their lead, and not that of our State Department.
 
And we should educate our own people on imperialism as practiced by our own country, wherever that may be.  In this case, the history of interference and military intervention explain much of what hurts the people of Central America today.   
 
On a personal note, it is hard for me to be objective about anything in Nicaragua.  That place ate up 7 years of my life, 5 years of my employment and 3 years of military service. 
 
We left a lot of people dead because we were fighting to defend the revolution.  The revolution meant education, it meant development, but above all, we had a promise to the people of Nicaragua that they would never suffer the cruel repression of the dictatorship again. 
 
In that, I feel betrayed. 
 

Time to vote in the KPFA station board election

Time to vote in the KPFA station board election 

And by that, I mean that I am asking you to vote for me.  

If you are a member of KPFA you can vote for me now. 

Your ballot should have arrived either via email or a post card. 

If you are not a member, please become one.  

The community radio part of the progressive community needs all of our engagement.  It is too late to register to vote for me, but it is not too late to join and help build this local radio station and our national network.  

A lot of friends have let me know that they are concerned with the age group that KPFA seems to center on.  I am concerned too, that is why I am on the board and running for a full term.  It takes board members to advocate policy changes.  The biggest change that I am standing up for is a change in generations.  We need new and younger people on the air, in the production studio and on the board.  That way we make needed steps forward and older people like myself can step aside.  

My other concerns are membership recruitment in general, our spending and fundraising, and better coordination of our news resources, especially local news. 

Most people have heard of the faction fighting at KPFA.  As a current board member, I have to say that it looks worse from the inside than it appears in public.  I am extremely disappointed and offended by the antics of the “New Day Pacifica” group even though I know some of them personally and have respect for their work in other parts of the radio station and around town generally.  

There is a difference between having alternative opinions and being on a warpath to be in charge.  Everyone should put their ideas out there; that is what a board is for.  There are a few tendencies around KPFA.  They are currently called New Day Pacifica.  When it comes to fighting for power, there is just one faction who is fighting for control any way they can.  There have been attempts to change the rules.  There has been a lawsuit.  There have been underhanded attempts to close a station (in New York). Meetings are not respected.  There are farfetched motions of censure.  

Members of this faction have some very good ideas and important points to raise.  But they need to stop trying to be the only people with a say in the present and future of KPFA and Pacifica.  Please do not vote for anyone that they recommend until they agree to stop abusing the system.  

I personally have thrown in my lot with Rescue Pacifica and I recommend that you vote for the same people that they endorse.  Rescue Pacifica is not a faction, it is an alliance of people who want to run the station together with everyone.  There are Democrats, Greens and others in this group. For more information visit https://rescuepacifica.net/ There are some independents running worth a listen.  Vicente Cruz is an old friend and a very ethical person who I endorse.  Thomas Lord I have never heard of, but I agree with his idea about bringing in youth and scrappy, innovative reporting.  

Right now, California is going through a fire and water crisis of historic proportions.  We need KPFA to be looking into the causes and solutions and keeping people informed.  The corporate media gives us a view that they call balanced.  That is a balance between agribusiness and real estate developers.  Yet environmental biologists agree with the traditions of the native peoples on land management.  Alternative media like KPFA should be our front on this issue.  

Just as we should be out front on all other climate change issues, other environmental issues and be a main source of honest news on race relations, economic justice, military intervention and all the other things that matter to most of the public.  

So, my message is to help us build our community radio, and its on-line counterpart, to represent the community and cover the news that our people need.  You can do that by joining.  You can do that by listening and sending feedback to the shows.  And you can do that by electing people who want to make something better out of what we have.  

And I hope to be that person you trust to elect.  

-------------------------------   

Over the past weeks there have been some questionnaires and debates.  

We were also asked to make our case in a 1-minute spot. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3-GAhlPgM4&list=PLkHN5Oufe4XPCt9LtG9lzC1n9onviaEla 

You can see the debates and other information here:

https://elections.pacifica.org/wordpress/youtube-channel/kpfa-candidate-debates/

Nicaragua and the crisis in solidarity

Nicaragua and the crisis in solidarity 

Perhaps we in the United States would do a better job of making good international solidarity decisions if we had any serious resistance to capitalism and imperialism of our own. 

There are a lot of things that we as a people could do to stand up for ourselves and oppose what our system, and its government, does here and around the world, but we don’t really.  We get a few great marches in at the beginnings of wars and such, but without any socialist opposition political party or other sustained, organized popular movements, the resistance always fizzles out.  

After a short time, the Democrats switch the public conversation back to something they like better, such as the right to be gay in the military.  The Republicans oppose.  The press follows. 

What little popular resistance we have is fragmented, and depends on the legal status of the shrinking remains of our union movement and even more fragmented opposition electoral politics.  The spaces that could have been organizations of people’s power are dominated by the bunch of private businesses called the non-profit sector.  Very few of our popular organizations even have a voting membership; of those fewer still have real, contested elections for the leadership.  Our government is not really a democracy, so what tools do we have to do better with organizations that should belong to the people? 

As a culture, we do not do grass roots led organizing very well, any more. 

So, how does a society that does not really have a strong movements practice solidarity with the peoples of other nations that do?  

For the most part we don’t.  

What we have instead is individual advocacy work, often embodied by some self-appointed people who set up some of those non-profits.  Such groups do a lot sometimes.  The boycotts of South Africa back in the day and the current Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement would be the two big cases of such an advocacy practice making a lot of political noise when noise is needed.  

Many would say that our Bernie movement, the AOC squad and the other left Democrat efforts being made with some success around the country are that kind of a popular opposition.  I disagree on two levels.  First is that they depend on our advertising model of expensive campaigns to get elected.  Second is because I do not feel that it works.  In Oakland we live in an area represented by such heroes as Ron Dellums and after fifty years, I am not sure we have a lot to show for it.  

In any case, the US practice is that advocates advocate for their thing and for the most part do not represent any consensus of our popular movements.  That is not solidarity; it is supporting a cause. 

What we do not have is some kind of agreement between trade unions, civil rights associations, political parties, immigrant associations, etc. that some part of US foreign policy or some outrageous human rights crimes of other nations should be opposed, by us, now. 

That would be a real solidarity movement.  We only have bits and pieces at best.  

On the positive side we have had some good “hands off” movements. Now would be a good time to be clear on the hands-off Cuba idea.  

A wish was expressed that Cuba resolve its current crisis peacefully without external interference. That is not coming from our liberal Democrat left, it is the position of the president of Mexico. He also offered to send food and vaccines to Cuba, if helpful, and expressed a desire to see an end to the economic embargos of Cuba.  

Less productively we have seen more than a couple “call your congressman” campaigns directed at the internal affairs of other nations.  

That finally brings us to the current situation with Nicaragua.  The last thing any nation in Latin America needs is some kind of self-declared left progressive movement in the United States advocating for US government involvement in their internal affairs.  

Why be willing to boycott Israel but not Nicaragua?  That depends who is doing the boycotting.  When it is the United States government in Nicaragua, there is an inconvenient truth that changes everything. 

The history and current reality of US imperialism in Latin America is a war crime itself.  It is a century and a half of invasions, subversions, proxy wars and military coups that we in the US should classify in our history as one of our national shames alongside the genocidal displacement of the Native Americans and the enslavement and subsequent oppression of African Americans. In Nicaragua all those things happened and that nation suffered death and destruction at our government’s hands.  We should not be asking our government to sanction Latin American individuals or nations or to be involved in any way any more than a German should be asking their government to sanction Israel.  

That does not mean that people in the United States should not be aware of, active around and opposed to the recent political arrests and the repressive actions of the Nicaraguan government.  It just means that we should be just as adamantly opposed to our own government doing anything about it.  

So, what can we do, how should we do it?  

Respecting the sovereignty of other nations does not mean that we don’t choose our own friends.  

We may not have the mass movement we really need here, but we do have some organizations we can trust to be consistent in supporting human rights and opposing US intervention.  Let’s work with them.  Let’s convince them that the arrests of the opposition leaders in Nicaragua is really repression.  

We should be able to form a consensus that demands the release of those political prisoners, the reopening of the media groups and the operation of Nicaragua’s own human rights organizations.  

And we can tell the Nicaraguan government directly how we feel about it.  

We can get more than a few hundred names on petitions, if we worked on it. 

We can get some unions and grass roots groups to sign on to prison release.  

We should find our friends in Nicaragua using the same criteria.  There are groups and organizations who are asking for civil liberties, but do not want a return to imperialism.  We can help them get their voices heard outside of Nicaragua, here and in other nations.  Sending some money might help.  A popular boycott of Nicaragua’s tourist resorts might help. We should ask our Nicaraguan friends what they would like us to do. If it jives with our values, then we should do it.  

There are other Nicaraguans who are not the friends of solidarity because they are wanting to impose a right-wing government totally allied with the US State Department that would roll back all that the revolution in Nicaragua ever did.  They deserve civil rights and their political prisoners should be released too, but be clear, they would not support democratic rights for anyone else, especially anyone on the left.  

Both the left and right have allies and friends in Nicaragua, and pretty much anywhere else.  

Finally, we and those of like mind around democracy and civil rights should make our voices heard, while we respect the fact that Nicaragua needs to sort its own problems out.  

And we as Americans have a lot of problems to sort out too. 

We would be doing the world a favor if we made some progress here.  

Can I have your vote for KPFA Station Board?

 I am running for reelection to the KPFA Local Station Board because our community needs community radio. As our country drives itself over many social and environmental cliffs our airways are jammed with a worthless discussion between the pseudo left, the center right and the extreme right. Community radio is where more encompassing news and ideas give us one of the few counter balances that we have in our national dialogue. 

KPFA is in a long-developed crisis of low listenership and low membership coupled with high costs and serious budget problems. In the SF Bay Area, an independent, progressive, community radio station like ours with developed programing and resources should have a much larger audience and support base. We need to correct this and put much more effort into recruiting. 

We need younger people as members. We need them on the air making new programing. We need them helping to run and lead KPFA and our Pacifica Network. We need more members of every age and background. This should be the job of EVERYONE at the station; the board, the management and all of the shows on the air. Every program should be promoting new members into leadership roles. Every program should be doing outreach out in the community, not just on the air. 

We also need to put more effort into improving our on-air offer. We need a better plan for the reporting on and regular delivery of local news. The current programming is very split up and individualized when some better cooperation and sharing of resources would give us a better coverage. 

The constant infighting and multiple attempts by one faction to take total control distracts us from fixing problems. I am not, and will not be part of the dubious actions taken such as the lawsuit, the bylaws takeover attempt, the midnight closure of another member station or anything else that will shut out voices on our governing boards. If that group becomes a minority at KPFA, I will not support the new majority shutting them out as they currently do to everyone else. I feel that to be on a community radio station board is to hold a public trust and will not have anything to do with tactics and actions that are not ethical. 

On the board I will work for complete and understandable reporting to the board and membership. If needed, I would be glad to server as a board officer to help turn things around. 

My personal background is that I am 63 years old, of white English-speaking extraction, a machinist, union member, shop teacher, retrained computer network engineer, small business owner, father of two and a polyglot with a deep, antiimperialist international background. Hopefully some of my developed skills and experiences will add to the human resources of our board and our station. 

It is what we can do, combined with what we are willing to do collectively that will determine the future of the KPFA-Pacifica project. 

If you are a KPFA member you can help me get on the ballot by signing my nomination. 

For instructions, follow this link:  Sign up to nominate candidates – Pacifica Foundation Election Website

vote NO on the new KPFA/Pacifica bylaws

You might know that I have been a member of the KPFA Station Board for a few months now.  Some friends have been asking me what (the F) is going on at KPFA radio? and what should they do about these new Pacifica Foundation bylaws changes that they are getting email and postcards advocating support?
 
Vote NO is what I think people should do.
 
Why?  Because the proposal is not only about bylaws.  It is also about a long-standing faction fight. The fine print in the bylaws proposal will put one faction in control and shut everyone else out permanently. 
 
Part of the experience of being on the KPFA Board is to get to see this faction act badly.  I don’t get shocked by much anymore, but this group has really gone too far several times.  The used to call themselves SaveKPFA, now they have a few other names including New Day Pacifica.  It has been personally disappointing to see people who I once respected a lot more justify all kinds of questionable maneuvers to get control of the network and to shut the others out.  Now they send you a slick post card full of nice photos of on-air personalities who support their proposal.  What you do not see is that they are all in the same faction.  The other factions have just as many on-air personalities opposing the bylaws, but what you are seeing is not a debate, it is political advertising. 
 
In the short time I have been involved this is the second time these faction fighters are trying these trojan horse bylaws referendum.  They have also tried a lawsuit against our own movement and attempted to shut down a sister station.  It is hard to describe how undemocratically they run the KPFA board where they hold a majority.
 
Are there financial problems at Pacifica?
Of course there are!
But the sky is not falling, no matter what you have heard from New Day Pacifica. 
 
Could the stations be doing a better job in programing?
I think so and I wish we were talking about how to make things better
instead of lurching from takeover attempt to takeover attempt.
 
Should we have better, more efficient governance?
Probably, but not at the cost of one side just getting rid of the other. 
A change in the bylaws would need to have support from all sides, not just one. 
 
Does something need to be done about the constant power struggle at our community radio network?
 
You betcha. 
I feel that democracy is messy and difficult.
And I don’t see how authoritarianism leads to something better.
 
Start by voting NO on the bylaws and then vote for new and younger voices to our station boards later this year.  We need some new leadership and distance from the toxic dynamic that has been holding us back. 
 
My seat on the board is filling in for someone who dropped out.  I will run for a term of my own this next election and I will let you know who I think are some of the other quality candidates.
 
And if you are willing to run for the station board yourself and help make KPFA a better community radio station, please get in touch. 
 
Yours
 
Don Macleay
 
donaldmacleay@gmail.com

On this day in 1987

 Veintinueve 

On April 22 of 1987 I turned twenty-nine years old in Spain. After a very short visit to Forlí I was invited to visit the Spanish coast by two friends from BLINK, the Bristol Link with Nicaragua, one of the solidarity groups where I knew people. 

Walking along the Spanish beach in springtime was warm weather for the mostly naked northern Europeans. I had never seen a nude beach before and would have enjoyed it more if I had not found my new Italian jacket not quite enough to block the cold. 

It was near Easter I think, in any case, someone threw some fire crackers. 

And then I had a memory of no memory. One moment I was feeling kind of out of place with boots, jeans, shirt and jacket standing less than ten meters from women dressed in only bikini bottoms. Next I knew, I was looking at them again from inside a depression in the sand. There was a mound of sand that I had not consciously noticed with a dip in the middle. I found myself poised nearly flat on the ground, touching spider like, only with my hands and feet, peeking over the top of the sand looking for where the gunfire had come from. All I saw was the mostly naked girls and their family exactly where I had last seen them before I had apparently dived for cover. Quickly it came to me what I had done and I dawned on me that the bangs had only been fireworks. Feeling totally embarrassed I stood back up, dusted off the sand and looked around. If anyone had noticed me jump, no one was showing any signs of it around me. I tried to calm myself and walk back down the beach to where we were staying. I felt like I had exposed myself more than any of those girls on the beach. 

My hosts had some kind of cake for me, as they knew the next day was my birthday. I was too shook up to really feel it and enjoy it. The next morning it became clear to me that I was really an emotional mess. One more thing happened to show that I was there and not really there at the same time. I decided that my birthday present to myself was going to be a train ride back to Italy and distance from anyone who might want to be emotionally close to me. Vacation with lovely women in Spain was too much for me. 

My walk through Florence in springtime 

I had had an acquaintance in Managua, an American guy who, like me, had had a connection with Italy. He was a professional baseball trainer in Italy and did much the same in Nicaragua. He threatened to write a memoire of Nicaragua called "Missing Italy". If he never wrote it, he should still. 

In my own way I had lived the last couple years missing Italy. Going back to Italy was on my mind when fired from the tractor school. When working in El Cuá I was preparing to move to Germany when the job was done, having started my bit of book work on the German language. 

With the war and the losses of war, I kept telling myself that I was going to live through that war and survive to walk in Florence in springtime. This became a mantra. Friends in Italy knew I had said this. Friends in Nicaragua and Germany knew it too. It was sort of my method to keep my focus and survive the war. 

I will walk through Florence in springtime = I will live through this. 

There were many reasons that I went back to Italy from Spain, but I mostly my ticket went there.  Beyond that I had no idea what I was going to do, where I was going to work, and only half planned to continue on to Germany to work and finish learning German. I was not thinking about the Florence in springtime pledge. 

I was more of an emotional mess than I knew, but it was becoming obvious, even to me, that I was not OK and that I needed to calm down, get used to peacetime and just plain get a grip. One of my friends in Brescia tried to get through to me telling me that what I had just experienced was very unusual and well outside of what most people found normal or could relate to. I'm sure she saw signs of me being too close to the edge too.

When I got back to Forlí I started putting together the first notes that would eventually lead in a roundabout way to this book. It had taken a moment to come back to Forli and I had not even asked my hosts about how long I might stay, or start the process of finding a job. If you had asked me, I think I would have said I planned to debrief with the Forli solidarity group and go to Germany to find a place to stay and make some money. There ended up being no time to discuss any of that because on my second morning there, everything changed. 

My host was Italian, sister of the head of the Communist Youth Federation who had originally invited me to visit Forli and connect them to a project in Nicaragua. Their father was the mayor and head of the local Communist Party. It was their mom who had chaired the meeting to decide to support the Cuá-Bocay project. 

Her husband was a South American and the least political of the bunch. They were very welcoming but we did not know each other well. 

That morning I came into the kitchen, bribed by coffee and sat alone at the table. The husband got me my coffee and seemed very awkward around me. He left. I started to wonder if maybe my visit here needed to be shorter. It was a small place and they may not have been up for having a visitor, or maybe not up for having me as a visitor. 

After the jump into the sand in Spain I had lost trust in my own reactions. Other things I had done were making me think that it would be reasonable not to want me around. Maybe they were being too polite by offering me a room? 

He came back in and sat next to me for a moment. Something was obviously wrong, yet he did not seem upset with me. He asked for the name of the guy I worked with in Nicaragua. I told him that meant a lot of people. Why? He did not answer. Telling me that he would be right back, he left the room again. I heard him and his wife in the next room talking in hushed voices, but not arguing. Someone got on the phone. My mind was on how to collect my stuff and get on the road to Germany. 

Then they both came back as I finished my Italian breakfast of cigarette, pastry and coffee. They asked me with dispelling kindness to stay seated as sat both sides of me. 

They placed the newspaper on the table open to a photo of Ben Linder, 

dead in a casket. 

Funny how one can do well in a crisis even when emotionally broken. From that moment on I went into action. The Forlí branch of the FGCI, (again that is the Italian Communist Youth Federation) took me around to speak out on what was happening in Nicaragua. I got in touch with the solidarity people in the US. Others got in touch with me. 

My friends and the Communist Party in Forlí took very good care of me, fed me, and housed me and if I had asked for it, they would have provided a doctor. This despite my erratic and irresponsible behavior on all fronts. I feel forever grateful to them all. They even took the time to help me make a phone call to my father. We went late at night to their dad's office because of the time difference. My step mother took the call. She asked where I was calling from and I had to tell her that it was the office of the Communist Party in Italy somewhere. She let me know that the phone was probably tapped and that there were some kind of FBI type guys sitting in a car near the house looking absolutely ridiculous because they did not blend outside a farm house on an isolated dirt road. She promised to let my dad know I was OK. We both knew that I was probably going to go back and that I was not OK, but that was inferred as we ignored our phone tappers. 

One of the places that the FGCI took me was called a "reader's circle" for the Communist newspaper Unità. These groups would gather for newsmaker interviews and talks. Since I was connected to an international story, they wanted me to meet local Unità readers and talk about what we were doing in Nicaragua on the project and to tell people who Ben Linder was and what my relationship to him was. I got used to it quick. 

Some of the questions took me by surprise. One man asked me if in the Nicaraguan militia, we had bullets for our guns. I asked him where one would be in the army and not have bullets for their gun. The answer was Italy. To that I told them I would love to join the Italian army and spend my service near the beach at Rimini, which was not far. We got just as much laughter when I was asked how it was we spoke Spanish in Nicaragua, English in the US and French and Portuguese elsewhere in the Americas. I explained that this was based mostly on which imperial power had dominated which areas and that Spain was the top dog in most of the two continents. His reaction was to say that Italy had never done anything like that. The stunned expression on my face joined the laughter in the room and a few people asking the guy what he thought of the Roman Empire. 

Two questions always came up. 

1) Come mai? Literally 'how never', but used along the lines of 'how the hell'. 

'Come mai' was the prefix to a sentence about being an American, who worked in Nicaragua and happened to be here and speak Italian. That was the question I was glad that immigration did not ask. I had a good two-word answer that was accepted with a laugh and no request for further explanation: 'una donna' a woman. 

2) Why? Why have you made this lifestyle choice? Why are you involved?

To this I had no answer. I did not feel like I had really had a choice and I said so. 

I knew that the call was going to come. It came. It was Mira Brown and Rigoberto Gadea who made it. Could I come back and help the project get back on its feet after losing Ben? Sure enough. I let them know that I was on the other side of the world, without any money or a job and... and they told me that they could take care of that. The solidarity around the project had grown, people were raising money. Could I come back and make sure that a project would get built in Bocay where Ben had been killed. I would have never asked to go back, but I could not say no. 

One friend understood entirely that I did not have a choice. It was me to have this kind of life. It was me to help with this kind of thing. It was me to go back. 

"Florence is there for you any time of year" 

I promised my friends in Italy that I would be back soon, just as soon as this crisis was over. 

Sure I would. 

There was no riot in Oakland last night

There was no riot in Oakland last night 

Because a police officer was found guilty 

The boards on my local stores will stay up 

Because we have unfinished business 

Now people are claiming that they are going to start 

What should have been finished long before we were born 

The boards will stay up 

And a black man will stay dead  

When I heard the words of the verdict 

I came close to tears  

I grieve for the man who will not benefit 

From the small victory that carries his name 

He will not take that lover back into his arms

No child’s eyes will look at him with adoration 

A friend of mine was murdered by our country 

Long ago his name was known by everyone 

He too never got to grow old 

Frozen in time as a hero 

The story gets retold 

Because it is mostly forgotten 

Pilgrims leave flowers at his grave 

As do I, in solitude 

Every day three of us are shot by police 

How many are bombed?  

Our soldiers and our cops are not changing much 

Three generations have learned something from them 

Fear  

Yes Stadium

That is YES to the stadium that we already have. 

And NO to the Jack London Square deal.  

When Jean Quan was Mayor of Oakland she told me that she wanted nothing to do with a stadium deal involving a team owner who was also a developer.  

Is that still the case?  

If so something is missing in the news coverage of the proposed ballpark. 

Considering that there is this guy who is probably on Libby’s speed dial. 

Letter: A’s owner could sell team, develop Coliseum property for profit – The Mercury News 

There is probably a big difference between what the rich people involved say that we need and the full story of how they will benefit.  

But that is not why I am opposed to the new park.  

I just want us to invest in fixing the old one.  

The Oakland Coliseum complex is two large venues linked to BART, with a freeway off ramp and a direct link to Oakland Airport.  There is really nothing structurally wrong with the building and not so much upgrade needed that the A’s have stopped playing their games there.  Former councilman Larry Reid used to point out that the site could be modified to include an Amtrack station.  

So, is Oakland so rich that we can throw a couple stadiums away because the sports press whines about Mt. Davis?  How about some better comfort for the people who attend?  More efficient and cleaning food services?  Clean and modern bathrooms?  Better child centers from which on could see the game while the kid played on a slide?  A moving walk to BART would be nice too.  The sum total of these things will not cost anything like what the new ballpark at Jack London will run us.  

And we are so rich we can throw away some of our port?  

The port needs some help.  A land grab is not the help it needs.  

And Jack London Square?  Will that put the stadium under the authority of the Port Commission?  What kind of transit do we offer there?  The ferry to San Francisco?  Is this our N-th gimmick to profit off of Jack London Square after spending so much time driving the main draws out of business?  A new stadium is supposed to help the vacancy rate?  The public has already paid for two white elephants in the area; is three the charm?  What does the place look like on days without a game?  If we are talking about setting up some kind of full time local business and services there, then why not do it at the Coliseum complex that we have now? 

So, there are some very practical reasons to upgrade the stadium that we have and invest in our port area in ways that run 7 days a week. 

So, why is this unwise and expensive project probably going to happen?

Money.  Developer money.  

If you are looking for elected officials who are willing to stand up to the developers, do not look at Oakland or anyone who represents Oakland at the county or state.  

And now the games being played have a long history at our stadium.  Most recently a group of A’s owning developers bought out the Alameda County share in a move so bold that even Libby could not put up with it without a fight. 

City of Oakland sues county over sale of Coliseum to A's (ktvu.com) 

And the monied interests howled, threatened and got their way. 

Oakland Drops Lawsuit vs. County Over Coliseum Sale – NBC Bay Area 
(I suggest that you watch the video) 

Also note the price, 85 million dollars for half? 

Who set that price?  

This act of welfare for the rich and professional sport blackmail has a long history in Oakland and in professional sports altogether.  About 10 years back Desley Brooks, who was then council member for District 6 was kicked off the Coliseum joint operations group to be replaced by Rebecca Kaplan in a move that was never explained.  Now Brooks was voted out by a Libby backed candidate.  I wonder how he will vote on the stadium “deal”?  Before that we had the Al Davis extortion, where Oakland bent over backwards to his list of demands and now the Raiders are in Las Vegas.  

A few years ago The Onion published a satirical piece where the US Congress threatened the city of Washington DC that they would move the government unless the district paid for a new capitol building.  新华网 The New China News Service repeated the story thinking that it was true.  It certainly was no less bizarre than professional sports stadium deals. 

The Coliseum free ride for big real-estate is attention grabbing and happens in the context of all kinds of development deals helped along by friendly public officials at city, county and state.  The often involve public property getting sold to private hands at low cost and with little to no public benefit.  This is also an aspect of the state control of our public schools as we are forced to close some of our schools and developers and/or charters pick up properties for pennies on the dollar. If you want to find the ugly side of Oakland government and politics, follow the money going to construction firms, investment companies and banks and of course in the purchase and sale of land.  

What I wish we had was some kind of independent review process that would investigate all sales of public land to private interests before it is authorized and had the power to stop the loss of public property.