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So one of my old friends has a sister-in-law who moved into my neighborhood. Since Trish is a fulltime teacher and I'm a hermit we hardly ever talk, but she's a really cool person. The other day she came around with another teachery person passing out fliers for the Downtown Neighbors Association's candidate forum. So the nice fellow and I went tonight.
Pzrenthetically, I've never been a member of the Downtown Neighbors because when I first moved into my house I called them and the contact person said that strictly speaking, I wasn't really in their neighborhood because my house is south of Laurel Street. Which was and still is to an extent like saying "the wrong side of the tracks." Except the train tracks go perpendicular to that particular divide. And the Downtown Nieghbors Association never recruits down here -- I've seen their flyers maybe twice in the twenty-nine years I've lived in my house.
Anyway, it turns out that while I wasn't paying attention another group has formed -- "Santa Cruz Neighbors" which is billed as being non-political and which is concerned with safety and working with the police to ensure that safety and getting all the stakeholders to agree on non-political issues like safety and traffic. They have subsumed all these other neighborhood groups most of which I had never heard of and which I suspect are actually Neighborhood Watch groups. They sponsored this event, really, it turns out, though the Downtown Neighbors banner was on the wall -- oh, and it was in the Police Department Community Room, which to my mind is a bad sign. Oh, and did I forget to say that one of the candidates is "the founder" of Santa Cruz Neighbors?
So. We get three votes. We have six candidates.
Cynthia Matthews
Mike Rotkin
Bruce Van Allen
Simba Kenyatta
Chris Cobb
Lynn Robinson
("one of these things is not like the other . . .")
The first three are veterans of the Good Government Protest Vote and Socialist Takeover of 1975 (give or take a couple years). Cynthia Matthews isn't anything like a socialist. She's a founder of the Downtown Neighbors Association and her first goal was to stop the demolishment of old buildings. She's not reliable on class issues.
Mike Rotkin is pretty much the architect of modern Santa Cruz politics, for good and ill. His cohort from the Democratic Socialists (something he doesn't allude to much these days) really reformed Santa Cruz politics, cutting through the good old boys network, pretty much eliminating electoral corruption, instituting fairly transparent and honest finances, and focussing the energies of city council on social services.
Even so, he's been on the wrong side of certain issues and I've been pissed off at him sometimes. Not currently.
Bruce Van Allen has been doing stuff like Friends of the River and brokering affordable housing. We had three rent control initiatives in the past, all defeated with massive amounts of out-of-town money (lots of absentee landlords here). So the rent control people have been struggling -- unsuccessfully until after the eafrthquake and also after the courts have been after the county and the towns in it to get with it and do something about the horrible housing costs here. I adore Bruce. He is so smart, and so cool, and so good. He and Simba were the only ones who seemed to be aware that there are racial issues in Santa Cruz, and he also seemed to be aware of the existence of the working class, and when people were talking about safety he said there are other safety issues too -- like, do people of color, and young people, and gay people feel they are protected?
I'm voting for Bruce. Hell, I'm going to go walk precincts for Bruce. Hey Emma, you want to go with me once or twice?
Simba Kenyatta is the only person of color running. He works I think still at the community center, and has done this and that in public service and grassroots politics over the years. I think he's kind of flaky. The nice fellow thinks he's a good candidate because he gets race, class, civil liberties, and dogs.
Lynn Robinson is the founder of Santa Cruz neighbors. She has endorsements mostly from rich folks and two of them -- Louis Rittenhouse and Phil Baer -- are pretty well toxic. Rittenhouse is the guy who refused to rebuild his properties on Pacific Avenue after the earthquake unless the rules were changed just for him. Height restrictions, mostly. Also he was on the City Council before and he was a brat. Not just right-wing, but prone to tantrums and illogicality. Phil Baer is the guy who says Beach Flats is a nice place except for all the gangsters (that is, Mexicans) who live there, oh, and he's not racist because oh, I forget why. This woman is the enemy. I had a hard time deciding that for sure. But the thirtieth time she said "stakeholders" and "not political" and "neighborhood values" I got it. When she said we have to revisit the discredited proposal to solve the University traffic crisis by paving over the Pogonip I decided she was nuts. As Mike pointed out, it's not just that Pogonip is our sacred greenbelt, it's also that driving a road through it would cause tremendous traffic problems at the intersection of Highway 9, Highway 1 (and Highway 17, actually, though it branches off a little ways away from there). and it was discredited years ago. And she a;lso kept saying "partnering" when what she meant was sacrificing everything that matters for the remote possibility of a couple of jobs.
So I know one thing: I'm not voting for her.
Chris Cobb was the only candidate under fifty. I really wanted to liked him. I really did. His flyer says all the right things. But. He's so vague about stuff when it comes to talking. And he's evasive about what he does for a living, saying it's hard to explain. I gather he's a human resources consultant -- he does projects for corporations. Um, what does this mean? He can't or won't say. And he can't think on his feet. And he just isn't very specific. I don't think he's too young: Mike was about his age when he first ran. But. Either there's no substance to him or he's not ready.
I'm voting for Mike, I guess. I wanted to vote for someone young and new and fresh, but neither Chris nor Lynn fills the bill. Last time I did vote for a new guy, Tony Madrigal, and if he runs again I think I can vote for him again (half the seats are up for election each year).
I don't know about Simba v. Cynthia.
The weirdest thing just happened. I was trying to delete a couple of words and the window just reverted to the friends page. I mean my post was gone, gone, gone. But then I went back to the update page and I got the prompt to restore from the draft and it all came back again.
Pzrenthetically, I've never been a member of the Downtown Neighbors because when I first moved into my house I called them and the contact person said that strictly speaking, I wasn't really in their neighborhood because my house is south of Laurel Street. Which was and still is to an extent like saying "the wrong side of the tracks." Except the train tracks go perpendicular to that particular divide. And the Downtown Nieghbors Association never recruits down here -- I've seen their flyers maybe twice in the twenty-nine years I've lived in my house.
Anyway, it turns out that while I wasn't paying attention another group has formed -- "Santa Cruz Neighbors" which is billed as being non-political and which is concerned with safety and working with the police to ensure that safety and getting all the stakeholders to agree on non-political issues like safety and traffic. They have subsumed all these other neighborhood groups most of which I had never heard of and which I suspect are actually Neighborhood Watch groups. They sponsored this event, really, it turns out, though the Downtown Neighbors banner was on the wall -- oh, and it was in the Police Department Community Room, which to my mind is a bad sign. Oh, and did I forget to say that one of the candidates is "the founder" of Santa Cruz Neighbors?
So. We get three votes. We have six candidates.
Cynthia Matthews
Mike Rotkin
Bruce Van Allen
Simba Kenyatta
Chris Cobb
Lynn Robinson
("one of these things is not like the other . . .")
The first three are veterans of the Good Government Protest Vote and Socialist Takeover of 1975 (give or take a couple years). Cynthia Matthews isn't anything like a socialist. She's a founder of the Downtown Neighbors Association and her first goal was to stop the demolishment of old buildings. She's not reliable on class issues.
Mike Rotkin is pretty much the architect of modern Santa Cruz politics, for good and ill. His cohort from the Democratic Socialists (something he doesn't allude to much these days) really reformed Santa Cruz politics, cutting through the good old boys network, pretty much eliminating electoral corruption, instituting fairly transparent and honest finances, and focussing the energies of city council on social services.
Even so, he's been on the wrong side of certain issues and I've been pissed off at him sometimes. Not currently.
Bruce Van Allen has been doing stuff like Friends of the River and brokering affordable housing. We had three rent control initiatives in the past, all defeated with massive amounts of out-of-town money (lots of absentee landlords here). So the rent control people have been struggling -- unsuccessfully until after the eafrthquake and also after the courts have been after the county and the towns in it to get with it and do something about the horrible housing costs here. I adore Bruce. He is so smart, and so cool, and so good. He and Simba were the only ones who seemed to be aware that there are racial issues in Santa Cruz, and he also seemed to be aware of the existence of the working class, and when people were talking about safety he said there are other safety issues too -- like, do people of color, and young people, and gay people feel they are protected?
I'm voting for Bruce. Hell, I'm going to go walk precincts for Bruce. Hey Emma, you want to go with me once or twice?
Simba Kenyatta is the only person of color running. He works I think still at the community center, and has done this and that in public service and grassroots politics over the years. I think he's kind of flaky. The nice fellow thinks he's a good candidate because he gets race, class, civil liberties, and dogs.
Lynn Robinson is the founder of Santa Cruz neighbors. She has endorsements mostly from rich folks and two of them -- Louis Rittenhouse and Phil Baer -- are pretty well toxic. Rittenhouse is the guy who refused to rebuild his properties on Pacific Avenue after the earthquake unless the rules were changed just for him. Height restrictions, mostly. Also he was on the City Council before and he was a brat. Not just right-wing, but prone to tantrums and illogicality. Phil Baer is the guy who says Beach Flats is a nice place except for all the gangsters (that is, Mexicans) who live there, oh, and he's not racist because oh, I forget why. This woman is the enemy. I had a hard time deciding that for sure. But the thirtieth time she said "stakeholders" and "not political" and "neighborhood values" I got it. When she said we have to revisit the discredited proposal to solve the University traffic crisis by paving over the Pogonip I decided she was nuts. As Mike pointed out, it's not just that Pogonip is our sacred greenbelt, it's also that driving a road through it would cause tremendous traffic problems at the intersection of Highway 9, Highway 1 (and Highway 17, actually, though it branches off a little ways away from there). and it was discredited years ago. And she a;lso kept saying "partnering" when what she meant was sacrificing everything that matters for the remote possibility of a couple of jobs.
So I know one thing: I'm not voting for her.
Chris Cobb was the only candidate under fifty. I really wanted to liked him. I really did. His flyer says all the right things. But. He's so vague about stuff when it comes to talking. And he's evasive about what he does for a living, saying it's hard to explain. I gather he's a human resources consultant -- he does projects for corporations. Um, what does this mean? He can't or won't say. And he can't think on his feet. And he just isn't very specific. I don't think he's too young: Mike was about his age when he first ran. But. Either there's no substance to him or he's not ready.
I'm voting for Mike, I guess. I wanted to vote for someone young and new and fresh, but neither Chris nor Lynn fills the bill. Last time I did vote for a new guy, Tony Madrigal, and if he runs again I think I can vote for him again (half the seats are up for election each year).
I don't know about Simba v. Cynthia.
The weirdest thing just happened. I was trying to delete a couple of words and the window just reverted to the friends page. I mean my post was gone, gone, gone. But then I went back to the update page and I got the prompt to restore from the draft and it all came back again.
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